Travel Advisory

And now the summer starts to get busy. I have both an out-of-town convention and Jazz Camp in my near future, so even when I'm here, I won't always be here (how's that for a Yogi Berra paraphrase?). Blogging will be light on some days, and nonexistent on others. I have signed up for Blogger's mobile feature, so we'll see how that works (if nothing else, I'll test-drive it a time or two), and you can always check out my Twitter feed if you're wondering what's up.

I'll See Your Environmental Snobbery and Raise You My Water Snobbery

In a Dallas Morning News op-ed over the weekend, a guy named John Guilford decided--after a mission trip to Honduras, where the water is often unsafe--that we take our water quality for granted and ought to all give up bottled water and return to drinking from the tap:

The trip had its challenges, not the least of which was an expulsion of the president within hours of our return flight. But by and large, it was a great experience. We left with a feeling of kinship and support for our brothers and sisters in Honduras. We also left with a feeling of relief in not having to use bottled water exclusively.

One of the first things I did upon my return to Dallas was to drink long and deep from a water fountain. Such devices are non-existent in developing countries such as Honduras. Other water-based luxuries that we take for granted, such as ice in our fountain drinks or slushed drinks from the convenience store, simply are not to be found. Even if these things were available on the streets of Tegucigalpa, for example, virtually no one would use or buy them because the public water supply is full of bacteria and parasites.

With all this in mind, why is it that so many of us in the United States still purchase and drink bottled water? Our cities and governments have spent billions to provide us safe, drinkable water at pennies per gallon. Many cities and towns tout their "Superior" public water supply ratings. Yet I am regularly amazed when I see people shell out a dollar or two – for filtered tapwater, in many cases.

Well, I can only speak for myself, but I have several really good reasons for preferring bottled water: 1) My tap water tastes awful. 2) I go through a lot of water on an average teaching day, and the bottles are the most convenient way to keep a whole lot of water cold and in nice, compact portions (I can't imagine slobbering out of a cooler all day, much less having to carry the thing around). 3) I only spend five bucks for a 24-pack that lasts a week or more, which is more than worth it to me. 4) DId I mention that my tap water tastes awful?

Guilford laments the fact that people dispose of 60 million plastic bottles in the U.S. alone on a daily basis. But I'm happy to report that not one of my bottles contributes to that number; I recycle each and every one of them. I suppose I could invest in either one of those expensive filtering devices for my kitchen sink or a (likewise somewhat pricey) filtering pitcher for the fridge, but that still doesn't solve the problem of how to apportion the water in a compact, easy-to-carry container that can go with me during the teaching day.

So maybe, at the end of the day, I'm a water snob and Guilford is an environmental snob. The difference is, I'm not trying to encourage everyone to do things my way, and it appears that Guilford is. But as Glenn Reynolds said at Instapundit today, "environmentalism is mostly about posturing--it's not about sacrificing." (Unless, of course, you're calling for someone else to sacrifice something.)

So what's your favorite water source--the bottle or the tap? And what would it take to make you change? (I've already noted, on several posts from my Vermont trips over the years, that if my own tap water tasted like Burlington's--more specifically the cold, clear kind from the wonderful water fountain in the basement of the Flynn Center--I'd own a single refillable bottle and carry it around all day. But, seeing nothing akin to Lake Champlain outside my window, I'm not expecting that to happen anytime soon.)

A Tour Away from Home

I've posted about the Tour de France on this blog for pretty much as long as I've been a blogger (so much so that I've decided to make it a category tag and will go back and append it to all the other posts later). There were times when I had to settle for little thirty-minute or hourlong updates every day, and even one year when we barely got that, thanks to the Tour moving to what was then an obscure cable channel that wasn't carried by very many systems. Nowadays, of course, the former Outdoor Life Network has morphed into Versus, and the coverage is outstanding both on TV and online.

But as I said on Twitter a few days ago, the Tour has taken on even more meaning for me this summer as I've recovered from my surgery. Having regained the ability to drive only yesterday, those nightly three-hour recaps on Versus have helped me keep my sanity during a long period of time where I couldn't go anywhere at night and where, by and large, friends weren't able to come over here on a regular basis. (Having West Coast Rangers games start not too long before the end of those broadcasts added to the enjoyment, even if that would keep me up past midnight every night for most of the past week.)

So why do I love the Tour so much? Let me count the ways:

• I like cycling. Unlike most sports that I watch, I have actually participated in cycling before, and will likely do so again once I'm all healed up. It's an enjoyable way to get exercise, there's definitely a social aspect to it if you meet up with the right people, and, while the DFW area may not be the most bike-friendly, I'm pretty close to some rural-type roads that would be fun to ride (even if a few of them are about to be bisected by the Bush Turnpike extension). And I've ridden enough that I can understand what the riders are going through, even if the very last-place entrant would mop the floor with me in a race.


• I like Europe. As I said on the Fourth, it's been ten years since my trip to Montreux, but a lot of the memories are indelibly etched in my mind. There are a few places in the States that may come close, (hello, Vermont!), but no place I've ever been can compare to Europe in terms of natural beauty and really cool architecture. Watching the villages and towns that the riders pass through is as enjoyable to me as watching the race itself (and it's a goal of mine to be over there during the Tour at some point, watching from the side of the road).


• Lance is back. I've been a Lance Armstrong fan since 1993, when he was a young rider out of Austin (with roots in Plano) riding in an American race called the Tour DuPont (no, really). I followed him through all seven of his Tour de France wins, and I was pleased to see him try it again; needless to say, I'm thrilled to see him in contention at the moment).


• Phil and Paul's coverage rules. The team of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen are some of the most outstanding commentators in any sport. It's not just their cool British accents or Phil's amusing phrases (known as "Liggettisms"); it's the knowledge and enthusiasm these two guys bring to the table. If listening to Phil call the end of a stage doesn't energize you, you're probably not breathing. (The only negative I can say about the Versus coverage this year is that we don't seem to get very much of Phil and Paul in the prime-time show. Maybe they're on more in the morning--I'm either sleeping or teaching during that point--but the nighttime show only offers an appetizer of them instead of a banquet. And while the American team of Craig Hummer and Bob Roll aren't bad--though Hummer drives me nuts when he repeatedly invites viewers to tune in the next day for expanded coverage "with Bob and I"--it's just not the same. If you have the masters at your disposal, you oughta use 'em.)

The Tour goes on a rest day tomorrow, and then my own summer gets a bit busy for a few weeks, so I won't be able to catch as much of the coverage as I have been this past week. But I'll be checking for highlights every day, and it appears that I'll be able to catch either the beginning or the tail end of each stage no matter what.

Thank you, Tour--you've made my recovery go a lot more smoothly so far.

A LIttle Spring Cleaning at the Blog

You may notice a slightly different look to The Musings today. First of all, I finally switched over to the Layouts feature (which puts me only about a year behind the curve, I suppose), which allows easier editing of the template on my end and a much easier way to scroll back through old posts on your end (just click the "Older Posts" link at the very bottom of the main page). While I kept the same general template, there's a considerable splash of green in the sidebar now, and some things are organized in a better fashion--especially the previous years' archives, which are now neatly rolled into a single link for each year, with clickable access to individual months within those years. (I also like the fact that they list the number of posts for each year; I had no idea until now that I hit my height of blogging in 2007, with 342 posts.)

Since a lot of my friends are not actively blogging right now, I also merged the Friends' Blogs section into an expanded Blogroll, and I updated the Other Cool Sites section with a lot of things that I've been reading lately, such as Labelscar, Not Fooling Anybody and, of course, I Can Has Cheezburger?--none of which had been represented over there, even if most of them had been quoted in the blog at some point. And if you're into extreme geekery, you might notice that blockquotes now have green text on the same color background as everything else, as opposed to the black text on white background that was used in the past.

This whole thing made me curious as to when the last time was that I made any major template changes to this blog. Believe it or not, it was May 10, 2004, so I guess you could say it was about time.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the slightly new look.

Today's Visit Left Me in Out of Stitches

I usually chime in on how the healing process is going whenever I go see the doctor, and I did that today, so here's the update: Things are going as planned; the doctor is very happy with how everything looks. The staples around the incision came out, and I can already feel an increased freedom of movement even while immobilized. I'm now able to sit with my knee at a 45-degree angle (I'm still walking with it locked down to zero for the foreseeable future), and that allows something else to kick in: Driving an automatic transmission. This is huge, of course, because I've been relying on others for transportation for the past two and a half weeks, with the result being that 1) opportunities to run even the most routine errands are few and far between; and 2) I've been stuck at home a lot for the past few weeks, with the expected boredom as a result. So starting tomorrow, I'll be able to get regular stuff done and give myself a change of scenery when needed.

I don't go back to the doctor for another six weeks now; by that point, I should be quite far along in physical therapy and hopefully ready to ditch the brace at that point. With classes at both the college and the public schools starting the week after that next appointment, the timing couldn't be better.

From here on, I'm hoping that everything is pretty much routine recovery stuff, so I'll probably go back to blogging about regular topics for most of the time.

Least Surprising Headline of the Week

From a blog post by Mickey Kaus; Everybody Hates the Teachers' Unions Now.

What spawned this headline is a report from the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights on the struggle to implement education reforms, thanks to teachers' unions seeming to thwart the process every step of the way.

Kaus concludes his post with this paragraph:

The report follows up a much heralded establishment call for reform in 1996 that was endorsed by two union presidents. But it notes that in the twelve years since, "few of the necessary reforms" have been put in place. ("Twelve years--the entire length of a child's education--is a long time.") In other words, it implicitly serves as an argument against trying to reform the schools in cooperation with the unions, and in favor of trying to reform the schools by defeating the unions. ...

That seems like a good plan to me. As I've said in the past, I"m no fan of unions in the first place, and that sentiment grows exponentially with regard to professions. And teaching is a profession, not a trade, so I've never quite understood why people would want to treat it like a trade. Professions shouldn't have unions, and my best argument for this comes in the form of a question: When's the last time you saw doctors go on strike? My answer would be "never," and that should be the way that teachers conduct themselves.

(And if you're wondering how I, as a musician, have avoided the union issue....well, the answer is that I've simply never joined. There was one time in college when I was playing a lot of society gigs, and there was a chance that I could have gotten more of them if I'd joined the union. but I was always waiting for the point when the money I would be making would outweigh the dues and be enough to convince me to go against my beliefs and join. And yes, I consider music to be a profession as well, and let me reiterate: Professions shouldn't need unions.)

As I've said here many times, I'm a big fan of the productive class (especially in contrast with the unproductive class and its ugly subset, the parasite class). So my big problem with unions in this context is that their very existence helps make people in the productive class less productive by demanding things that people should really be earning, or not, on their own merit. If the teachers' unions really are hindering necessary reforms because such reforms would make things less cushy for their members (or, more likely, the union leadership itself), that is wrong, and it would be wise for teachers to jettison such "representation" and get down to the task at hand. And it's worth noting that, if my "administrators must teach" proposal ever got adopted somewhere, that place would have no need for a teachers' union, because the so-called "management' would also be part of the "labor" force.

(I should mention that some of the report's suggested reforms seem to imply an over-reliance on standardized tests, something which I do not favor, but that's another post for another time.)

The Opposite of Progress Is...

I've been disappointed in the government many, many times over the years, but now I'm thoroughly disgusted at more than a few members of Congress. According to CNS News (via NewsAlert, h/t Instapundit), the House Majority Leader openly admitted that very few in Congress actually read bills before voting on them--even the really big ones like the health care "reform" bill that's winding its way through the process:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that the health-care reform bill now pending in Congress would garner very few votes if lawmakers actually had to read the entire bill before voting on it.

“If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes,” Hoyer told CNSNews.com at his regular weekly news conference.

Hoyer was responding to a question from CNSNews.com on whether he supported a pledge that asks members of the Congress to read the entire bill before voting on it and also make the full text of the bill available to the public for 72 hours before a vote.

In fact, Hoyer found the idea of the pledge humorous, laughing as he responded to the question. “I’m laughing because a) I don’t know how long this bill is going to be, but it’s going to be a very long bill,” he said.

This is an outrage. In a just world, Hoyer would resign immediately after owning up to this garbage (or his constituents would kick him to the curb in the next election), and the same would apply to anyone else who voted on something without reading it.

And for those who might say that there wasn't time to read everything before it's voted on, my reply would be to make the time. After all, that's your job--not enriching your own pocketbook, or getting reelected, or stroking your own ego. We pay you way too much of our money for you to give anything else than your maximum effort. You are here to serve, and it's high time you start acting like it.

Obviously, I am in complete agreement with the above pledge, which every member of Congress should be required to sign at the beginning of each session, with criminal penalties for lying about it. (Yes, this is hardcore, but I believe in holding those who are paid by public funds to even higher standards than those in the business world.) And I also think that the member-by-member results of every vote should be available online within an hour of its taking place. (And while I'm on a roll: No riders to bills. Each proposal is voted upon strictly upon its own merits; no more stunts like trying to sneak an environmental proposal into a funding bill for troops in Afghanistan.)

If all this sounds unrealistic, because it would cause a lot less to get done during any session of Congress, well....I consider that a feature, not a bug. I don't want Congress to spend all of our money (and then some) every session; I want them to carefully pore over every detail of any piece of legislation they intend to pass. In other words, I want the exact opposite of what's been happening now to occur in the future.

And if these kind of constraints would appear to discourage people from entering a career in government? That's the idea as well. The Founders never meant for anyone to spend an entire career at the public trough. My idea, as previously stated here, would be for anyone desiring to work in government to first learn a useful skill and find employment in the productive class, then lend that expertise to government for a brief time (no more than ten or twelve years) and then return to the productive class afterwards. That way, nobody gets drunk with power, and their time spent in Washington is actually put towards public service instead of self-service.

That's my vision of America. Who's with me? (And hey, Marylanders: Please do us a favor and send Hoyer home next time. No amount of pork brought to your home district is worth the type of damage that he and his ilk are doing to the country.)